A selection of writings on how to achieve a more ethical society and way of life, from one of Ancient history's most celebrated thinkers

How can one live well in the world? What does it mean to be happy? In this selection from The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle probes the nature of happiness and virtue in a quest to divine an ethical value system. Exploring ideas of community, responsibility, courage, friendship, agency, reasoning, desire and pleasure, these are some of the most profound and lasting ancient writings on the self to have influenced Western thought.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives--and upended them. Now Penguin brings you a new set of the acclaimed Great Ideas, a curated library of selections from the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.
Aristotle was born at Stageira, in the dominion of the kings of Macedonia, in 384 BCE. For 20 years he studied at Athens in the Academy of Plato, on whose death in 347 he left, and, sometime later, became tutor of the young Alexander the Great. When Alexander succeeded to the throne of Macedonia in 335, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his school and research institute, the Lyceum, to which his great erudition attracted a large number of scholars. After Alexander's death in 323, anti-Macedonian feeling drove Aristotle out of Athens, and he fled to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy, and they are still eagerly studied and debated by philosophers today. Very many of them have survived and among the most famous are the Ethics and the Politics. View titles by Aristotle

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A selection of writings on how to achieve a more ethical society and way of life, from one of Ancient history's most celebrated thinkers

How can one live well in the world? What does it mean to be happy? In this selection from The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle probes the nature of happiness and virtue in a quest to divine an ethical value system. Exploring ideas of community, responsibility, courage, friendship, agency, reasoning, desire and pleasure, these are some of the most profound and lasting ancient writings on the self to have influenced Western thought.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives--and upended them. Now Penguin brings you a new set of the acclaimed Great Ideas, a curated library of selections from the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

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Aristotle was born at Stageira, in the dominion of the kings of Macedonia, in 384 BCE. For 20 years he studied at Athens in the Academy of Plato, on whose death in 347 he left, and, sometime later, became tutor of the young Alexander the Great. When Alexander succeeded to the throne of Macedonia in 335, Aristotle returned to Athens and established his school and research institute, the Lyceum, to which his great erudition attracted a large number of scholars. After Alexander's death in 323, anti-Macedonian feeling drove Aristotle out of Athens, and he fled to Chalcis in Euboea, where he died in 322. His writings, which were of extraordinary range, profoundly affected the whole course of ancient and medieval philosophy, and they are still eagerly studied and debated by philosophers today. Very many of them have survived and among the most famous are the Ethics and the Politics. View titles by Aristotle